"Like nature, history is full of processes that cannot happen in reverse. Just as the laws of entropy do not allow a bird to fly backward, or droplets to regroup at the top of a waterfall, history has no rewind button. Like the seasons of nature, it moves only forward."

- Strauss and Howe: “The Fourth Turning”, First Edition, page 255

"Contemplating the concept of time can be quite confounding, to say the least. In the extreme, considering the paradoxical nature of time’s passage will stretch the mind causing thoughts to invert like taffy in a rolling machine or light yielding to the gravity of an Event Horizon before the edge of a Black Hole in deep space.

Knowing Einstein was right means time stops at the speed of light. Surely then, waves of thought must generate their own specific gravity to capture both light and sound, together. Our eyes and ears record each moment and translate events into high definition digital memories which we can recall upon demand and view as celluloid film stock in a dark room.

However, in this dimension, there is another aspect at play that comes attached to time. Space: The final frontier. These conflagrate together and then separate at any given moment never to coalesce again in quite the same way. Time can be recalled like a ghost, or a spectral hologram, on the mind’s screen, but the space will have changed and dissipated entropically like dust digested in the amorphous bellies of Stephen King’s Langoliers.

To put it another way, time changes everything.

This week one of my offspring had a milestone birthday so we went to a morning movie matinee followed by an expensive late lunch at a fine dining venue. It was there where I chewed my food and contemplated the confounding conceptual continuations of space and time.

The movie was the new Star Wars flick, "Rogue One" and the state-of-the-art theater featured stadium seating and a massive UltraScreen Deluxe® with Dolby® Atmospheric Surround-sound which, according to the advertisements, offered the “ultimate moviegoing experience”. As I watched the story unfold in REAL D 3D® with my 3D glasses in place while eating my popcorn and nestled comfortably in the red leather DreamLoungerTM recliner, I thought to myself how I really am in the future. In the lobby after the movie, I checked Drudge on my smartphone and learned Carrie Fisher had just died in Los Angeles.

This made me remember way back to my past when I was a preteen and first saw the original Star Wars. I watched it with several friends in an ornately vintage, and solitary, theater in my small town. Through the patina of time and the opaque looking glass of my mind’s eye, I remember hoping no one would tell my parents, or my orthodontist, that I was eating popcorn and lemon drops with new braces on my teeth. Although I was an avid reader back then with a keen appreciation for science fiction, I had not seen a film before that captivated me like the first Star Wars. The excellent storyline, superior special effects, and the characters in the film really made an impression on me.

If my current self could go back to that day, I would meet the geeky, metal-mouthed kid after the movie and tell him some things. I would also mention how, in 39 years, he will celebrate his progeny’s birthday who, at that time, will be several years older than he is now and how he will be seeing another Star Wars movie on the very same day that Princess Leia dies in real life.

The ironic confluence of time and space, indeed.

I am sure the mini-me at that time would have pegged me as a brain-damaged old fool and, in turn, would have attempted to persuade me into buying him and his friends a six-pack of beer, a fifth of peppermint Schnapps, a Playboy and a can of chew. After all, according to "The Fourth Turning," by Strauss and Howe, the year 1977 was two and a half “Turnings” ago. Back then, the future wasn’t set. Or was it?

“We perceive our civic challenge as some vast, insoluble Rubik’s Cube. Behind each problem lies another problem that must be solved first, and behind that lies yet another, and another, ad infinitum. To fix crime we have to fix the family, but before we do that we have to fix welfare, and that means fixing our budget, and that means fixing our civic spirit, but we can’t do that without fixing moral standards, and that means fixing schools and churches, and that means fixing the inner cities, and that’s impossible unless we fix crime. There’s no fulcrum on which to rest a policy lever. People of all ages sense that something huge will have to sweep across America before the gloom can be lifted – but that’s an awareness we suppress. As a nation, we’re in deep denial.”

- Strauss and Howe, “The Fourth Turning”, First Edition, page 252

Written by the historians William Strauss and Neil Howe, “The Fourth Turning” was published in 1997 and was, at that time, boldly proclaimed by the authors to be an “American Prophecy”. The book is fascinating in that it very thoroughly documents recorded cycles of history across multiple cultures and eras in order to predict the timing of “America’s next rendezvous with destiny”.

Processing almost like a Cliff’s Notes summary, the book identifies the timelines of historical events and matches them to specific life cycles of people in the form of generational archetypes. What is also interesting is how Strauss and Howe quantify and compare the recordings of history of multiple authors throughout the millennia to find uncanny comparisons in both historical and generational cycles. Ironically, the comparisons stand up not only to the test of time regarding recorded events in history, but the generational turnings and archetypes also translate to ancient literature and other writings as well, ranging from Homer’s Iliad to the Holy Bible.

The concept of time is discussed in the context of both circular and linear perspectives as Strauss and Howe describe what is called the “saeculum”. The saeculum represents a “long human life”, or approximately 80 to 90 years comprising of four turnings each lasting about 20 to 22 years.

Just as there are four seasons consisting of spring, summer, fall and winter, there are also four phases of a human life represented in childhood, young adulthood, middle age and old age, or elderhood. As each phase of human life represents approximately 20 years, so is each generational archetype identified within historical cycles, or turnings, as follows:

Click image for larger size.

The generational archetypes experience the historical turnings according their life stage, or age. Amazingly, history shows a consistent pattern in how the generations both cause and affect historical events. The patterns develop based upon how each generation interacts with the other and this also has documented consistencies that are delineated by the authors.

At any given “turning” during the saeculum, the set order of the generations on the age ladder is called a “constellation”. For example, during the Fourth Turning Crisis of 1929 through 1945, America experienced a financial crash, a great depression and a world war. During this period, the Prophet generation was entering Elderhood, the Nomad generation were middle-aged and the Hero generation fought WW II as young adults while the Artist generation were children during that time.

When the Crisis (Winter) era of financial hardship and war was over, the Spring of another First Turning began as the Hero generation led America into a season of unparalleled prosperity from 1946 through President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. It was then the baby boomer, Prophet, generation began. As young adults, the boomers began to rock the nation with new age flower-power, feminism, guitars and free love. Thus began the Awakening that lasted through Ronald Reagan’s first term that ended in 1984. It was then the Third Turning of the Unraveling began.

In 1997, when the Fourth Turning was published, Strauss and Howe used their generational model to predict with remarkable accuracy, the start of the next Crisis in 2005:

“By the middle Oh-Ohs, institutions will reach a point of maximum weakness, individualism of maximum strength, and even the simplest public task will feel beyond the ability of government. As niche walls rise ever higher, people will complain endlessly how bad all of the niches are. Wide chasms will separate rich from poor, whites from blacks, immigrants from native borns, seculars from born agains, technophiles from technophobes. America will feel more tribal. Indeed, many will be asking whether fifty states and so many dozens of ethic cultures make sense any more as a nation – and, if they do, whether that nation has a future.”

- Strauss and Howe: “The Fourth Turning”, First Edition, page 252

In 1997 there was no way to foresee the sequencing of 911, the Patriot Act, Edward Snowden, government incompetence after Hurricane Katrina, the financial crisis of 2007 – 2008, the subsequent TARP bailouts or the election of a mysterious, biracial pied piper to the presidency of the United States.

There is no way anyone could have predicted the ensuing eight years of Obama, the nationalization of healthcare, the orgy of greed hosted by Wall Street at the expense of Main Street, endless wars, unchecked immigration, the TSA, NSA, Homeland Security, the CIA versus the FBI, smart phones, drones, religious discriminations, Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, the Alt-right, Black Lives Matter and fake news.

Given the accuracy and timing of Strauss and Howe’s predictions, perhaps there is real validity behind their generational theory after all. And, given this, then we are now within the Winter of a Fourth Turning Crisis.

Can you feel it in the air? High powers in dark places are gathering and sides are being chosen as potential treachery and intrigue lurk around every corner. A global empire stands prepared to battle with populist movements and sovereign nations across the globe while rumors of a neo American civil war abound here at home.

Captured corporate media propaganda outlets and deep state government agencies relentlessly shill for a global empire and stoke the fires of war against a free alternative media while simultaneously provoking a nuclear armed Russia.

Half of the nation’s electorate, on the brink of a financial abyss, would rather kneel before an evil empire than to support the outcome of a free election. It matters not that the new President Elect happens to be the most successful guy in the world with a great family; or the fact he self-funded his campaign and overcame great odds against a blatantly biased media and corrupt-to-the-core establishment fighting him and his millions of deplorable supporters at every turn.

Of course, there is no unity in America today. Those days are long gone.

“People young and old will puzzle over what it felt like for their parents and grandparents, in a distantly remembered era, to have lived in a society that felt like one national community. They will yearn to recreate this, to put America back together again. But no one will know how”

- Strauss and Howe, “The Fourth Turning”, First Edition, page 252

Winter is here. War is coming. Battles will be waged and conflicts will rage. There will be no escape for what is coming and no guarantee as to any outcome, save one: After this Fourth Turning, there will remain only liberty or tyranny. One, but not the other. For this will be a fight unto the death.

Even so, do many Nomads now entering middle-age, and their Hero generation progeniture, actually understand what is about to befall them? Do they even care? And, for those who do understand and do care; do they know how to fight?

Truly, there are many variables to this historical cycle that were absent in the all of the previous Fourth Turnings throughout history. A few examples would include pervasive and devastating technology with the capabilities of either enslaving, or killing, entire generations of people; a global corporatocracy in control of government agencies, mass flows of information, food and resources; entirely misinformed and apathetic populations with no moral bearing, belief system, or willingness to accept truth in order to stand strong against the dark powers now encroaching; and, finally, there are so many who have been trained to embrace the utopian lie of one world under tyranny. Sadly, many of these may be the new Stormtroopers in waiting.

In the end, we must choose. And not choosing, by default, is a choice. Can a rag tag federation of freedom fighters with truth, liberty and history on their side under a flag of 13 stripes and 50 stars, with idea-fueled keyboards, a compromised internet, and semi-automatic weapons prevail against a galactic empire in control of a technocracy more powerful than any fictional Death Star?

We’re about to find out.

In 1977, Carrie Fisher’s star was born in the form of Princess Leia. Today, her light has faded; imploded like a supernova in the vacuum of space and time. Yet, even now, we see through the lens of Hollywood’s telescope a reflective luminance shining from a fictional galaxy, far, far away.

The year 2017 has arrived. Cheers to the New Year. Everything that has ever happened before has delivered us to where we are now. Hold on to that. Even more importantly, don’t forget to fasten your seatbelts and place your trays in the upright and locked position.The warp drive is about to be engaged. A new journey has begun.

Publishing Note: Due to Bob Nichol's other commitments the city-specific radiation reporting will now be published every 2 weeks until further notice. The next such report will be on January 14, 2017. I will update the weekly Hiroshima bomb equivalents information. This is to keep you as aware and informed as possible, not alarm you, though you should be alarmed, and is scientific FACT, not sensationalistic nonsense. Everything here is active-linked for your own verification, or not; I encourage you to do so. The radiation's not going anywhere, folks, but we are... - CP

"Your Radiation This Week: December 31, 2016"

By Bob Nichols

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

- Shiva

(San Francisco) December 31, 2016 – "Good Day, this is “Your Radiation This Week” for the past two weeks. The city-specific radiation lever reporting of YRTW is now every two weeks until further announcements. YRTWis published every two weeks on Saturday; the next publication date is January 14, 2017. This is a brief hiatus in the numbers while I finish other projects. Based on seven years of historical records from EPA, the Rad numbers will continue to increase in the deadly levels. The outlook is not good.

Updated by CP December 31, 2016: Fukushima Equals 13,596.6 Hiroshima Bombs Today, More Tomorrow; There is No Place On Earth to Escape the Rad: The 3 melted-through cores of the destroyed reactors, totaling over 600 tons, at Fukushima daily release the radioactive equivalent of 6.45 Hiroshima bombs directly into the atmosphereand the Pacific Ocean. As of November 26, 2016, 2,108 days since the disaster began, this equals the detonation of 13,596.6 Hiroshima atomic bombs and it is still going strong, with no end in sight, considering that the half-life of uranium-238 is about 4.47 billion years and that of uranium-235 is 704 million years. There is no technology on this planet to deal with this situation. There are only 336 cities on Earth with more than one million people. That is the equivalent of 40.46 Hiroshima atomic bombs apiece. First thing, grasp the difficult concept that this is an ELE or Extinction Level Event. The deadly meltdown and dispersion of radioactive fuel throughout the world is on-going to this day. There is no escaping our fate, there are no solutions.No one is exempt. The radioactive particles are all over the world now.

All reporting cities are above normal. These are a portion of the American cities that exceeded 1,000 CPM these past 2 weeks. 49 Cities are Reporting Radiation Above 1,000 CPM. Take precautions.

Changes: The YRTW Table of poisoned American cities has changed by adding a Column on the Right hand side. It is labeled “Corrupted?” The purpose of the column is to provide guidance as to the reliability, consistency and truthfulness of an individual city’s High Rad reading for that given week. Since a city’s report is subject to many strongly felt opinions that can affect Rad Readings, whether or not the Rad Unit was reporting at least 168 Hours (24 X 7)takes on additional importance. The number of hours the machines work in a week is not an opinion. It is a documented fact; it is only a number, a measure of efficiency. The unit either reported publicly; or it failed to do so 100% of the time. It can’t do both. All things being equal there should be One Reading per Hour for 168 Rad readings a week. The corruption may originate with a machine error, programming glitch, human intervention or change, intended or not. The response may be “Yes” for “Yes, it is corrupted.” The entry will be “Left Blank” for “Not Suspected.”

Most Radioactive City in America: Colorado Springs, Colorado is the most radioactive city in the US, “Recorded,” that is. Other cities have the radioactive “contagion,” just not as severe,even though the listed cities all exceed 1000 CPM. No action has been taken by the US Government, however; nor is it expected. They are the biggest cowards of all. The world destroying strength of Big Time Rads cannot be denied. The Rads can be ignored till they kill you. You can run but you cannot hide, the Rads always win.

Breakout! Nuclear Radiation Down: From December 17 to December 28, 2016 the deadly nuclear radiation decreased all across the United States. Only 36 American cities recorded Rad Reading greater than 1,000 CPM. It happened because most of the 104 nuclear power plants in the States were turned down to an idle or Switched Off. Thousands of businesses, schools and other institutions either Closed or were running a partial schedule so that the expensive, dirty electricity from nuclear power plants was simply not necessary. The utilities used cheaper renewable electricity instead.

As the Rad leaking nukes were shut down or run with a light throttle the deadly Radiation in the air plummeted, too. All across the country the Rad was down. HALLELUJAH! All was getting better… if even for a while; 11 days to be exact. Then the Nuke boys let the hammer down on Dec 28, 2016 and started powering up the nukes as electricity demand increased. The more nuke power plants there are running hot; the more these brittle old Wignerized rattletraps leak Rad like a sieve.

By December 30, 2016 49 American cities with Rad Monitors were recording Rad Readings over 1,000 CPM. The writing on the wall is clear; All nuclear power plants must be closed immediately. The Nuclear Industry people are murdering their neighbors– plain and simple.

Let’s all remember the 50 State Governors have various elements of a National Guard that work for them. As such, they have enough force to enter the killer nuclear compounds and assume control of local nuclear power plants under their health and safety as well as police powers. If some misguided local rent-a-cops on the grounds of the leaking nuker plants get weird – just shoot’em. Let’s get right with history, Governors.

Extreme Rad Alert: There is active consideration for changing the classification of the radioactive glass beads exiting the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. The IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is considering changing the characterization of the Cesium 137 glass beads from “soluble” to “insoluble.” This one word change is very significant, as it multiplies the true harm done by the Cesium 137 by 108 Times. For those of you who are wondering, Cs 134’s Multiple is 8 times. Soluble means Cs 137 dissolves in water– slowly. As a result a person passes it out in urine and feces; it is 99% gone in 2 years. Insoluble means it does NOT dissolve in water and is trapped inside the organism, that means your body, for up to 300 years– dead or alive. Since the Cesium 137 (Cs 137) Rad makes up about a third of the Rad escaping from reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, this is an extremely dangerous situation. Be advised and act accordingly. This situation occurs world wide.

* Isotope Count reporting: These CPM numbers do not represent the actual radiation counts in your radiation weather. It is higher [or worse] than these government certified partial reports say. Use these report numbers as your Starting Point in adding up your daily, monthly and annual exposure from your Rad Weather. Most radiation monitors report on the radioactive presence of Cesium 137 at the detector. YRTW will report on “the secrets the Pros use” in estimating the actual Total radiation counts. It is not a pretty picture. Squeamish readers may want to turn to other Veterans Today articles reporting on usual things like wars and people getting blown up by an actual named enemy you can see in pictures.

The Lethality goes up for 35 years; then declines slightly and hangs steady for millions of years, for that release. New releases start a new clock all over again. Regrettably for all normal Humans, that is a bunch of generations. The end result is extinction, of course. Everybody is included; no one is left out. Truthfully, it is a bummer and I know of no variety of radiation-exempt Human Species.

Day One out of the reactor use a news reported Cesium multiplier of 150 Times. After 15 days outside the reactor the multiplier is still approximately 100 times the Cesium Twins. Take all appropriate Rad precautions. A second Multiplier is for Rad particles that have been outside the reactor for ten years or more. The Total radiation declines to approximately five (5) times the Cesium level. The lethality is still increasing though. Here’s how you can calculate an estimate of your Total Rad today: Use a reported account of the Cesium 137/134 CPM in your area and Multiply Times 5. Another way to say it is:

Cs137/134 CPM X 5.0 = Total Radiation released in CPM

Radiation types commonly measured by radiation monitors include Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Neutron and X-Ray radiation. Only Beta and Gamma are reported by the EPA and here on YRTW. There are 1,944 other individual Rad elements, only a few are ever mentioned in articles. In short: The disaster’s Cesium 137/134 radiation CPM that is conveniently echoed by local and national news outlets, tells you right away by simple multiplication (x 5.0) how big the disaster really is, even if they are lying. At least it gets you closer than “There is no danger to the public.” That would be You. Think of it as the insider’s secret code. Multiply away! That’s it. No magic or VooDoo, just the facts as close as you can calculate it. Good Luck.

No, It is not OK now: Reductions in the count of over cities over 1000 CPM does not mean it is OK now; or, even that it is getting better. Often times when the Radiation goes down the associated lethality of the Isotopes goes up. The two things are separate measures. It could mean that some of the Uranium 238 has gained a Neutron and changed to Plutonium 239, a more dangerous Isotope.

March 13, 2011: Aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, 100 miles offshore of Fukushima: "During that March 13 phone call, Cleveland wrote, Troy Mueller- the deputy administrator for naval reactors at the US Department of Energy- said the radiation was the equivalent of “about 30 times what you would detect just on a normal air sample out at sea.”“So it's much greater than what we had thought,” Mueller reportedly warned other American officials after taking samples on the Reagan. “We didn't think we would detect anything at 100 miles.” After Mueller made that remark, according to Cleveland’s transcript, Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman asked him if those levels were “significantly higher than anything you would have expected.” He responded yes. When Poneman later asked Mueller, “How do the levels detected compare with what is permissible?” Mueller said those on the scene could suffer irreversible harm from the radiation within hours. “If it were a member of the general public, it would take- well, it would take about 10 hours to reach a limit,” he said. At that point, Mueller added, “it’s a thyroid dose issue.” If people are exposed to levels beyond the Protective Action Guideline threshold released by the Energy Department, Cleveland acknowledged in his report, radiation could have ravaged their thyroid glands."

5. CPM. “Although we can’t see it, taste it, smell it or hear it we can measure radiation and observe its effects. One way to measure radiation which the United States Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] has chosen to use on its radiation websites is in Counts Per Minute. Each Count is One Radioactive Decay.” Quote from the ‘Your Radiation, This Week.’” Apr 3, 2015.

“Tidally locked in synchronous rotation, the Moon always presents its familiar nearside to denizens of planet Earth. From lunar orbit, the Moon's farside can become familiar, though. In fact this sharp picture, a mosaic from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's wide angle camera, is centered on the lunar farside.

Click image for larger size.

Part of a global mosaic of over 15,000 images acquired between November 2009 and February 2011, the highest resolution version shows features at a scale of 100 meters per pixel. Surprisingly, the rough and battered surface of the farside looks very different from the nearside covered with smooth dark lunar maria. The likely explanation is that the farside crust is thicker, making it harder for molten material from the interior to flow to the surface and form the smooth maria.”

"One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters– whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.

Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents’ house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden? You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won’t take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister.

Everyone is finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill. Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts– and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place. Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them.

Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.

Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the “ideal moment.”? Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person– nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need.

This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important. Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are."

"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that has nothing to do with you, This storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up the sky like pulverized bones."

- Haruki Murakami

"The joke was thinking you were ever really in charge of your life. You pressed your oar down into the water to direct the canoe, but it was the current that shot you through the rapids. You just hung on and hoped not to hit a rock or a whirlpool."

"I'll never understand why some people can't just let others live their lives, you know," Danial said. "You don't have to understand. You don't have to agree. Just leave people alone. When I look at the moon and planets and stars, all that narrow-mindedness and hate seem so petty. The universe is such a big place. One hundred thousand light years just from one end of the Milky Way to the other. One hundred. Thousand. Light years. In the time it's taken for light to travel from one end of our galaxy to the other, thousands of generations have passed. It really makes you realize how small we are, doesn't it? How short our time on earth is."

"There is a word, a concept, in Zen Buddhism that doesn't quite translate perfectly into the English language: Mu. Mu is the response given by a Zen monk to a question that cannot be meaningfully answered. It suggest that the question's premises are not real, that there is a state of emptiness that lies beyond yes and no, that the asker should unask the question - indeed, that anyone who would ask such a question in the first place might well to question his entire perspective on life.

Though the word was never uttered in the 1984's seminal teen-computer-hacker-political-thriller "War Games", the idea lies at the heart of the conflict that fuels the movie: a new Pentagon supercomputer that controls the nation's nuclear codes is caught up in a relentless war-game simulation trying to answer the question, "How can the United States win a nuclear war?" We all know it's a flawed question - the whole point of the Cold War arms-race theory of "mutual assured destruction" was that, in a world of opposing superpowers, the sheer volume of weaponry is meant to deter the use of any nukes at all. But back in 1984, when computer networks were new and exotic, it seemed entirely reasonable to worry that an artificial intelligence might start firing missiles based on the inhuman outcome of an algorithm. Of course, the computer finally found its Zen."

"What about you - can you tell when it's time to remove yourself from a defective board game?"

“Bitter feelings allow us to become perfect victims in that we no longer feel obliged to work toward healing. It is natural to feel resentment or anger when life does not unfold as expected. We consciously or unconsciously anticipated one experience, and we grieve for the loss of it when the universe puts something else in our path. Most of the time, we work through these feelings and they pass. Occasionally, our anger and resentment do not fade and are instead transformed into bitterness. Bitter feelings allow us to become perfect victims in that we no longer feel obliged to work toward healing and choose instead to identify with our pain. Yet as unwholesome as bitterness can be, it is also a natural element of our emotional palette. When we acknowledge that it is okay to feel bitter, we reconnect with our hurt in a constructive way and can begin the process of working through it.

The nature of bitterness is rooted in the fact that the pain we feel provides us with a rationale. We may feel that we deserve to embrace our bitterness to its full extent. And to be bitter is, in essence, to cut ourselves off from all that is positive, hardening our hearts and vowing never to let go of our hurt. But just as bitter feelings can be self-defeating, so too can the release of bitterness be life-affirming in a way that few other emotional experiences are. When we decide that we no longer want to be bitter, we are reborn into a world filled with delight and fulfillment unlike any we knew while in the clutches of bitterness. The veil it cast over our lives is lifted, letting light and warmth touch our souls.

Divesting yourself of bitter feelings can be as simple as truly forgiving and moving on. Even when your bitterness has no concrete object, you can forgive situations too. Healing pain can be challenging but may be easier if you remind yourself that you are the only entity truly affected by your emotional state. In time, you will discover that letting go of your bitterness frees you to initiate the healing process and allows you to once again celebrate the possibility of the more wonderful life you deserve.”

"It's strange how what drives us may abandon us midstream, how what tickles our ears with lies one moment may tell us truths that knock us on our emotional ass the next. After all, it is an unbelievably real world, with Darwin scribbling his thoughts into books and telling us what monkeys we are. Each of us explores possibility, hungry for sustaining adoration, yet we know enough to render ourselves helpless. We strive and strain, bellow and believe, we learn, and everything we learn tells us the same thing: life is one great meaningful experience in a meaningless world. Brilliance has many parts, yet each part is incomplete. We live, heal and attempt to piece together a picture worth the price of our very lives. The picture I saw presented demonic executioners, who crippled those daring to look and consumed souls without defense. They're everywhere. Some are people we know. Others are the great fears and addictions of our lives."

A speech by Hugo Salinas Price at the inaugural ceremony of the Fourth Convention of the Association of Mining Engineers, held in the city of Durango, State of Durango, Mexico, on August 25, 2016.

"At what point in History does humanity find itself? Where are we? In the course of the past centuries, the study of the physical sciences, born in the 16th Century when the Englishman Francis Bacon established the "Scientific Method", has had such enormous success and has so greatly influenced humanity, that Science has become a materialist world-religion.

The central problem of our times is that official economists attempt to apply the "Scientific Method" when designing economic policies for governments, and this method is not applicable to human activity. The "Scientific Method" cannot be applied to social concerns, because physical matter and human beings behave in totally different ways. Matter cannot choose, and human beings do choose their behavior. So, while action applied to matter produces predictable results, action applied to human beings must consider the fact that human being do choose, they do have options, and thus their behavior cannot be predicted successfully, cannot be quantified nor expressed correctly in equations. The world's economists ignore this fundamental fact, and so they formulate economic plans for the State that always turn out as counter-productive, because their plans produce results that are always quite the opposite of what they expected.

Nevertheless, the influence of the physical sciences is so great, that a false economic science is taught at all the important universities of the world; this false science attempts to apply the methodology of the physical sciences to the study of Economics and the formulation of economic policies. An enormous mistake, that has sunk humanity into the dark night that covers us!

Thoroughly confused by the false economic science that prevails over a benighted humanity, the financial systems of the world - all based upon the US Dollar in the last analysis - have created gigantic quantities of debt that are shaking the most important banks of the world and threatening their insolvency. Insolvency would mean significant losses for creditors of the banks, and depositors in banks are in fact creditors. Thus, the fear of banking insolvency has caused a rise in the price of gold that parallels the present crisis in the world's financial system. The public is feeling growing concern regarding the safety of their bank deposits, the value of equity assets and regarding the liquidity of corporate and government bonds that represent world debt.

At present, we see that the combined might of Russia and China will have to force the US to give up its policy of projecting military might around the world. The US will have to stop dreaming of world domination. As US military influence around the world begins to recede, more questions will be asked about the convenience of the world's monetary system, based on the fiat dollar, which up to now has been omnipotent. Therefore, we shall begin to see more discussion regarding a return of the gold standard, the only monetary system that does not require military force for its implementation, because gold is money with substance, politically neutral and therefore conducive to peace among nations.

We do not know just how the world will return to the use of gold money; it will possibly take place in the midst of disorder. In whatever way it takes place, the return to gold implies very painful changes in all the national economies of the world, because the use of gold will put heavy locks on the ability of governments everywhere, to run into debt. And when governments are no longer able to take on debt in ever-increasing quantities, the world as we have known it will have vanished.

It is important to notice the very close connection that has existed in our times, between the behavior of humanity in every sense, and the world's monetary policy since it abandoned the gold standard, as a result of the excessive financial cost of the First World War in 1914; that war broke out in August, and most people in Europe thought it would not last beyond December, because the governments at war would run out of money. However, the belligerent parties unexpectedly resorted to printing paper money to pay expenses, and that was the beginning of the end for the gold standard.

In the next few years, the disappearance of the gold standard had relatively modest effects, because the world's Central Banks had to hold gold as reserves, and this exercised a brake upon their expansion of credit. However, on August 15, 1971, when the US unilaterally defaulted upon the Bretton Woods Agreements of 1944, holding gold ceased to be important for the Central Banks. What became necessary and important, was for them to hold dollars - irredeemable in gold - as reserves.

At that moment, American policy was liberated from the need to restrict credit in dollars, for fear of losing gold to its creditors; the ensuing unrestricted expansion of credit on the part of the US led to an orgy of the world's expansion of credit, that is to say, of debt, which today is expressed in inconceivably enormous numbers.

The expansion of debt on the one hand, means on the other hand the expansion of money - paper or digital money - in corresponding quantities in the whole world. Thus, the fact is that humanity has lived, for the past 45 years, in a state of drunkenness based on debt.

The governments of the world have turned into wild spenders, because there has been no limit to their ability to go into debt, an ability that was strictly limited under the gold standard, and at least partially limited under the Bretton Woods Agreements, while they lasted. The ability to go into debt affects the behavior of the human being. A habitual debtor spends until he goes into full bankruptcy. His behavior in the meantime becomes disorderly and licentious.

The governments of the world, in the past 45 years, have behaved like habitual debtors, and their unlimited spending has changed the behavior of humanity. There is disorder in personal behavior; a shameless flaunting of vice; family life has broken down because the father, who used to be the support of the family, has lost his authority: his wife now has the opportunity of leaving the home to work and she has her own income; the children can ignore paternal authority and can live idle at home, instead of having to go out to work. In the world today, there is no longer any social consensus regarding the appropriate way to dress - a clear manifestation of the social transformation suffered by humanity in the last 45 years. How many hundreds of millions of youngsters have their own costly cell-phones? How many hundreds of millions of autos jam the streets of the cities of the world? How many millions of electronic screens in homes keep humanity in hypnotic state? The ample credit that is offered to acquire these things originates in the capacity of governments to go into debt and rain money upon their populations.

Consider also, the boom in world tourism. Millions of tourists wander idly around the world every year. Is the world really much wealthier than it was in 1971? No, the world is not so much wealthier; we have the impression that the world is far wealthier than it was fifty years ago, and that economic scarcity is a thing of the past, because all the governments of the world borrow continuously, and with their policy of spending they in fact subsidize leisure - and no one thinks about the debt that is piling up.

Government policies of social spending, which have plenty of political support, are funded by the ever-increasing indebtedness by governments and they have the effect of reducing individual responsibility. In other times, personal charity alleviated the suffering of the less fortunate in this life. Today, government spending aims to keep everyone comfortable.

The fate of the habitual debtor is bankruptcy. The same outcome inevitably awaits our world.

For uncounted centuries, humanity lived in fear of hunger. God said to Adam when he expelled him from Paradise: "You shall earn your bread with the sweat of your brow." During the last half-century, humanity has been rapidly losing the fear of hunger, because governments that spend borrowed money have offered all sorts of monetary assistance so that people will not have to earn their bread with the sweat of the brow.

The day is approaching when we are going to wake up with an inevitable world financial crack. What are those accustomed to living off of government spending, either directly or indirectly (which includes practically all of us) going to do? Only the aborigines of the Amazon, of New Guinea, or of Borneo are going to live through that period without suffering. Unfortunately, a good number of the more than seven billion human beings on the planet will feel pain or even suffer death.

World debt is documented in Bonds, which are contracts that promise payment of a debt. With regard to the wealthy that hold large quantities of Bonds: when the crack arrives, their Bonds will become worthless pieces of paper. That is the nasty surprise that is coming for the wealthy.

The policies that could make of Mexico a strong and prosperous country, have been well-known for ages. A government that collects low taxes; a government that operates under a budget, without borrowing to increase its expenditures; a government that does not burden the population with excessive regulations; free trade; solid currency; legal safeguards for private property; public works of infrastructure limited to a government budget. Such was the policy, generally speaking, of our President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964-1970). When his term in office ended, Mexico's foreign debt was: $4 billion dollars, and our Central Bank, Banco de Mexico, held that amount in cash on its Balance Sheet. It is hard to imagine that we shall ever again enjoy such a policy. Consequently, Mexicans are facing a rather somber future.

In view of the great chaos that the whole world will endure when the collapse in the value of the gigantic debt that hangs over the world takes place, I cannot do otherwise that recommend to all, the formation of private savings in gold and silver coins, since those metals have always been, throughout history, the lifesavers of those who possessed them.

Such is my vision of the dawn that awaits the world. My thanks to all, for your attention."

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